You rarely hear about those smaller European countries in the news, but Hungary is in the spotlight now as it progresses further from democracy. With Russia taking on the aggressive role of trying to maintain a superpower status, it has been playing nicely with its western border allies.
They say that Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is too "chummy" with Putin and that the government is corrupt. Well, you tell because Orban is going to win a third consecutive term. As a member of the EU and NATO, Hungary is not necessarily an autocracy, but its system is moving more closer to Russia's. Media is being cracked down and there is blatant gerrymandering on the electoral map. Orban actually admires Russia's political system and wants his country to adopt a similar autocratic governing style. Now, Orban is surrounding himself with powerful businesspeople and has been awarding contracts to certain people, which some point to corruption.
The ironic thing is that Orban began his political career in 1989 with an anti-Soviet stance. He was perhaps the most anti-Russian politician in all of Eastern Europe. However, since 2010, his stance has been changed and now he has allowed the Kremlin influence to seep in. Critics also point to similar anti-migrant and anti-European integration policies. That is true because Hungary has been growing more nationalistic in the sense they don't want immigrants flowing in. They built fences a few years ago with Serbia and Croatia. Anti-semitism has been steadily growing again, and it doesn't help that there is an anti-George Soros (a Hungarian Jew who fled in the 40's) campaign.
To continue with this corruption, new Hungarian law mandates that NGO's receiving more than 24,000 euros from foreign entities must register and disclose sources. True, that seems pretty legit, but it's also an attempt to lock any organizations funded by George Soros's Open Society Foundations. He owns the media and fines media outlets for "imbalanced" or "insulting" news. Sound like fake news? Yeah, you bet. Since the 2008 financial crisis that opened up media organizations, Orban's Fidesz party has built up its control and now owns about 90% of the media.
Orban keeps on getting closer to Russia and has been frequently meeting with Putin and even awarded a nuclear power plant project to Rosatom, a state-owned Russian company. The project is really controversial because it wasn't officially revealed to the state budget. He claims that only Russia has the ability to do it, but is he just trying to play nice to Putin for other favors? Kind of reminds me of the Animal Farm thing where the pigs betray everybody in the end.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/europe/hungary-elections-russia-orban-intl/index.html
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